Death of a forest ( more large fires soon across the West )

Vail Daily ^ | August 7, 2006 | Alex Miller

[george76]

Experts paint grim picture for local trees, eye future forest..

It seems there’s just not much good news for trees these days...

Pine beetles decimating lodgepole pines across the West ...foresters are already looking ahead to what the landscape will look like in the future.

“This mature pine forest is a goner,” said Cal Wettstein, district ranger for the Holy Cross and Eagle ranger districts. “We’re focusing on the next forest.”

Asked what the future holds...Wettstein said simply “large fires.”

Over the next two decades, the beetle-killed trees will shed their needles and their branches, then fall down and contribute to a tremendous load of fuel on the forest floor, Wettstein said. At that point, he said, it’s a waiting game as to when the combination of fuel, weather and a spark culminates in a large-scale fire.

“It’s not if, but when,” Wettstein said.

Referencing other large fires in recent years, he said the factors that cause them are often decades in the making.

The Big Fish fire in the Flattops Wilderness four years ago, for example, followed a spruce beetle outbreak in the 1950s...

The Yellowstone fires in the 1980s were set up by conditions dating back to the 1930s.

“It’s inevitable,” he said. “We can’t treat it all.”

Wettstein pointed out that, following a pine-beetle outbreak in the early 1980s, entomologists recommended clear-cutting large swaths of forest to stimulate new growth and forest diversity.

The suggestion was to cut some 52,000 acres of forest between Vail and Summit counties, he said, but only about 1,200 acres was cut in that period.

“The entomologist predicted this exactly,” ...

“But the social and political atmosphere being what it is — here we are.”

[george76]

Recently, I drove from Cody into Yellowstone. There are many miles of big, dead pine trees. This area is just one lighting strike from a big explosion. It was not touched in the last big Yellowstone fire.

I do not know which was private, state, or federal exactly, but the federal stuff was really bad. Once it gets going, they will have to wait for the winter snow storms.

I wish that the states had more say on the federal lands inside of the states, or better yet, have the states own/control these lands.

We see many blow downs that have tens of thousands of acres of good lumber that the Sierra Club lawyers have blocked. The USFS foresters decide what the best science is and what the best actions for a healthy forest is...but then the clever lawyers find a weak, emotional judge who delays the decision long enough for the economically valuable trees to lose their economic value.

Then, we have a big fire which costs the taxpayers alot of money to fight. The trees and the clean up would have been a profit center for all.

[HairOfTheDog]

I understand, but I have a couple thoughts to temper your observations... First, don't pretend there is ~always~ a better use than letting nature take it's course. Land has rarely suffered for the lack of human involvement. Just as it would recover if we log it, it will recover if we don't. There would still be beetles, there would still be fires every year. That's the way the world works out there in dry country.

Second, you see timber going to waste... I see ship after ship leaving port here as raw logs, going to Japan, some to be cut up and sold back to us, much of it to be stored there in huge reserves. Many sawmills here have shut down, yet there are more people than ever and no one fails to finish a house for lack of lumber. It's a big country, with a lot of trees. It could be that harvesting that deadfall really doesn't always pay. Nature's sometimes a messy place.

Just grist for the mill.

[sergeantdave]

I have a couple of American chestnuts growing in my outdoor nursery. The tree redefines the phrase "slow growth." I suspect I'll be well past 100 years old before I can roast a chestnut over that proverbial open fire. It's the only tree I grow that doesn't seem to thrive in river bottom soil.

[george76]

You have many excellent points.

What are your thoughts on the many small logging towns that are now broke and closed ?

The schools, medical centers, stores...are closed. Decent paying jobs are gone so that the husbands have to leave to some city to put food on the table.

[george76]

I know of Chinese sub-contractors who are looking for rare trees for new homes in China. One situation involved a small stand that the landowner did not even know about.

A forester came out and found this small stand, the few trees were very carefully removed, wrapped very carefully, and shipped to Communist China.

They said that these trees were to be used for some new home of some leader as that big dam was going to flood his home.

The American landowner then paid off his home mortgage and all his debts from the sale.

I wish I had some of those trees. America Cherry or something. Not sure exactly.

[HairOfTheDog]

We have a lot of those here too, and it's sad. I love small timber towns. We've lost our sawmills, we've lost a lot of wood manufacturing. If the Japanese can buy logs, ship them to Japan, cut them up, make them into things and ship them back cheaper than we can, we're doing something wrong.

Some of it had to happen, on a purely local basis, there was a boomtime when we were logging at a rate we could not replenish, so environmental considerations were a part of it, but that's not the only reason... Unions and the cost of labor... I don't know... someone else could probably speak better on all the macroeconomics that were going on.

One random sortof related tangent that occurs to me alot:

We make things out of fake wood. Pressboard, cheap furniture, very little real solid wood carpentry, lots of plywood and veneer. What's up with that? Why can't you buy a maple table that's really maple?

Why, when the manufacture of very ornate trims and moldings common on buildings a hundred years ago, could now be done easily by machine, do we think those details are too expensive?

[tiki]

If a tree is healthy they can survive the bugs but when the environmentalists started managing the forests by suing the government good husbandmanship went by the wayside.

[A CA Guy]

When these beetles eat all those trees, do they have secondary things they eat or will they die?

We could always replant years after they die out so it is whole again many decades from now if the beetles die out.

[george76]

I believe that these pine beetles mostly eat pine trees.

I am not a biologist. Forester and others know much more about this science than me. Hopefully he will be around soon.

Waiting until the bugs kill every pinetree in North America does not seem to be the best solution.

Logging dead trees and replanting seems a good choice in some places, sometimes.

Also logging large areas and leaving them as fields for grasses to grow makes some logic. The deer and elk prefer grass over bark and needles. Hawks, eagles...like open fields to catch mice for lunch.

So, clear cutting is not always all bad.

[george76]

The attack on so many historic American jobs by the hard left is very disappointing.

We see many fishing communities along the California and Oregon coasts that depend one one main economic source : fishing.

Then some government bureaucrat makes some dumb rules, the whole community is at risk. It is not just the boat owner who has mortgaged his boat and home, but also the secondary businesses and jobs.

The big factory ships from Russia, Communist China, or wherever can scoop up tons outside the territorial limits and then the sea lions can eat all the salmon they want at the river mouth.

GRRR.

Sorry for the rant.

And then there are the miners and...

Thank you in advance for being so polite.

[george76]

It would be nice if the foresters and other scientists could make the final decisions.

Even if they decide against my personal view, the foresters would do a better jobs of managing the forests than lawyers and judges with no education, traing, experience...in forestry.

[tiki]

One of the problem though is that those who really knew what they were talking about and fought the environmentalists have been pushed out and now we have more enviros in the FS than not. It really would be nice if common sense reigned.

[george76]

You are correct.

We call them the Banana's...up from Nimby's.

Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

---

I do know many good USFS and BLM folks who want to use common sense and science, but are denied by all the legal, PC paperwork.

Sad.

[Colorado Doug]

The suggestion was to cut some 52,000 acres of forest between Vail and Summit counties, he said, but only about 1,200 acres was cut in that period.

Couldn't be because idiot Forest Service Bureaucrats wouldn't let them be cut, could it? The fools are doing their best to make sure our forests burn. Because it's "natural"

[george76]

Much of Vail will burn....IMHO.

Have driven by on I-70 ?

There are many homes with lots of dead trees very close by.

I do not see how the fire dept.'s will defend these homes if they get wind and a big , wild fire.

[george76]

Second, the natural thing.

The eco-nuts say that it was natural 500 years ago to let the fires run, so we should do the same now.

Their moral relativism is nuts.

[forester]

When these beetles eat all those trees, do they have secondary things they eat or will they die?

We could always replant years after they die out so it is whole again many decades from now if the beetles die out.

---

First question : No. Bark beatles eat trees. If all the trees die, all of the beetles die.

Second: This is a two part question. First; replant under a sea of dead trees, or among a field of fallen trees after several decades.

This would be an un-natural situation. If a fire goes through, much of the branches and smaller trees would get consumed....some of the larger trees would remain as large rotten logs - but the fuel for the next forest fire would be minimal. Planting under dead trees or among a field of dead fall would be like storing gunpowder in a charcoal factory ... yeah, one could argue that everything is OK as long as a fire doesn't occur, but if a fire starts WHOOOOSH!!! All of the planted trees are toast.

The second part is to wait for the beetles to die out. These bugs are native to our forests and have always been around. They are either endemic ( ie exist at low levels killing isolated trees) or they are epidemic (ie killing large swaths of trees) Because they are insects, humans have few options as to what they do.

We cannot spray them, nor pass laws to make their activity illegal and subject to fines and imprisonment. All we can do is to maintain healthy forests. In the old days, periodic fires burned through an area every 7-10 years. This kept forests open by burning up dead and dying trees, excessive young growth, and patches of dieseased trees. THis cycle was interrupted in 1910.

We cannot, after 96 years of accumulated deadfall and forest growth adopt the position that we should "let nature take it's course". This mis guided notion will not result in the beautiful open stands of large timber so common to photographs of the early 1900's. This philosophy ignores basic physics (is dead trees burn) This "Do nothing" philosophy results in the predictable: old trees get sick and die, then get burned up in a lightning fire.

There is nothing noble in presrving a forest so that it may burn in an un-natural conflagration - humans interuppted the cycle, humans need to fix it. To abdicate responsibility for proper forest management for the sake of some lofty ideal of "protecting the forest" is incredibly naive, and, as shown by this article, predictably destructive.

[george76]

Thank you for your answers.

It helps us understand a little more about the science.

[ladyinred]

Amen. I live in the Sierras and I could not agree more.

[forester]

Thank YOU for all of your work on this thread George.

I had a long day, otherwise I would have responded sooner.

It is so ironic to me how so-called environmentalists discuss forestry. On the one hand, they claim that some things they don't like (ie roads and clearcuts) are bad.... it's a no-brainer they say, 'cuz they read some Sierra Club coffee table book.

However, when these same enviro's are confronted with scientific and professional reasoning to build a road, or harvest some timber, they then then shift gears. Suddenly, the forest is " a complex ecosystem that we barely understand" it becomes fragile in their mind - as if burning it to a crisp is somehow better then thinning out the weak trees with a chainsaw. In other words, nature is resilent enough to recover after a 100,000 acre wildfire, but too fragile to recover from a 20 acre clearcut.

The shifting arguement that is presented to us foresters is truly frustrating, I wouldn't wish it on anyone.